Subtle Russian Light Show Depicts President Obama With a Banana in His Mouth

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A group of Russian students celebrated President Obama’s 53rd birthday earlier this week by projecting a racist, gay-baiting light show onto the front of the U.S. embassy in Moscow. Thanks? The laser display started innocently enough, flashing the words “happy birthday” across the building. But then things get ugly fast, as President Obama is depicted in a tiny hat fellating an unpeeledbanana.

Claiming responsibility was the Moscow Student Initiative, an “art group” composed of “activists, students, [and] patriots.” Earlier in the day, as something of a slightly racist appetizer to this even more racist main course, the group unfurled a banner across the street from the embassy with the words “I don’t see … I don’t hear … I don’t speak the truth to anybody,” and primatelike caricatures of the president. In case that was too understated, Keith Rothrock, who tweeted the image below, points out that the poster is comparing Obama to amonkey.

Across from the US embassy in Moscow today, Russians hung this racist banner addressing Obama on his 53rd birthday. pic.twitter.com/wqhX9ILE8W

The Moscow Times says the banner was a protest against “what the students who created it saw as the U.S. government’s hypocritical handling of the situation in Ukraine.” Their method of using racist imagery? Well, that’s just kind of a thing Russians like to do with Obama. The former Russian figure skater who lit the Olympic torch earlier this year tweeted this racist image of the president and first lady. Certain Russians love race-related jokes about the president. And this sign of Obama and a banana has popped up around East Russia recently. Like the light show, it implies that the banana is a phallus, telling Obama not to “choke on” it. That’s the kind of gay-baiting that would surely make Vladimir Putinproud.